Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

webkit.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 254 posts

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#71

Post by downandout »

saagarjha wrote: post #67
downandout wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am old enough to have seen the Internet emerge. You were enraptured by content and services provided by companies that lost billions of dollars, courtesy of investors, during the dot com era. Those investors provided that capital in large part because they knew how lucrative it could be if online advertising became as efficient and effective as it is today. You will not see that kind of subsidy in the post-ad world…

> You were enraptured by content and services provided by companies that lost billions of dollars, courtesy of investors, during the dot com era. What about the independent blogs?

Of course anyone who wanted to spend their time back then doing what we now call blogging, who wanted to pay for their own hosting, could have done so. However, I am not sure that the ability to read the thoughts of independent bloggers was a major driving force behind the mass adoption of the Internet. It was quality content and services, subsidized by investors who for the most part hoped companies could generate revenue from advertising, that drew the public to the Internet.

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#72

Post by [deleted] »

downandout wrote: post #51
rale00 wrote: post #40

So what is going to happen when Apple succeeds in making it impossible to make any money off advertisements shown to iOS users on the web? I'm currently imagining a future where publishers start to just redirect iOS traffic to install their app, where they can actually make money. Good news for the walled garden, I guess?

I came here to say exactly this. Most profits for online ventures come from retargeted ads, and most businesses lose money on cold audiences just so that they can build retargeting audiences. As a result, when tracking dies, so does most online ad spend. I am really curious what the web itself (outside of apps) will look like in a world where the quality of content and services implodes because of the inability of pu…

[deleted]

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#73

Post by jjulius »

saagarjha wrote: post #66
rale00 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Didn't people make money off internet advertising before the modern surveillance-marketing complex? What happened to it? Non-contextual advertising still exists, but it's perceived as less effective, so there's a lot less money in it. I don't know if that perception is correct, but I do remember back when a common complaint from people was that the ads they saw weren't relevant to them. It's also not just targeted…

> Non-contextual advertising still exists, but it's perceived as less effective, so there's a lot less money in it. I don't know if that perception is correct, but I do remember back when a common complaint from people was that the ads they saw weren't relevant to them. As far as I’m aware, the current state of advertising is people either being too creeped out by ad suggestions to buy anything or still feeling like…

For me, absolutely.

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#74

Post by peteretep »

rale00 wrote: post #40

So what is going to happen when Apple succeeds in making it impossible to make any money off advertisements shown to iOS users on the web? I'm currently imagining a future where publishers start to just redirect iOS traffic to install their app, where they can actually make money. Good news for the walled garden, I guess?

> So what is going to happen when Apple succeeds in making it impossible to make any money off advertisements shown to iOS users on the web?

Then they start offering micropayments, and iOS users are such a gigantic market, who Apple already micro-charge for Apps, and who’ll pay good money, that every publisher jumps on board immediately.

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#75

Post by cameronbrown »

peanutz454 wrote: post #55
andykx wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not impossible to advertise without tracking users.

For some reason people just have an aversion to paying for stuff they use. Facebook's revenue per user is less than 7$, I don't use facebook, but do not mind paying that little for something I use instead of getting tracked wherever I go. Similarly Google's service that I use like gmail and photos are easily worth about 7$ per month. I would pay if they said they will stop tracking me. I don't know about youtube.

YouTube being the only one you've listed that has a premium option. The problem is people will say they'll pay but as soon as the option comes up, they don't.

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#76

Post by jazzyjackson »

geofft wrote: post #47
rale00 wrote: post #40

So what is going to happen when Apple succeeds in making it impossible to make any money off advertisements shown to iOS users on the web? I'm currently imagining a future where publishers start to just redirect iOS traffic to install their app, where they can actually make money. Good news for the walled garden, I guess?

Didn't people make money off internet advertising before the modern surveillance-marketing complex? What happened to it? I mean, maybe the answer is that those ads were only profitable because of the novelty factor and now that we have metrics we know they don't work, or at least don't work anywhere close to how much they cost. But I do miss things like the webcomics running their own ad network, Google's textual ads…

From what I can tell, the pre-surveilence norm was businesses having to find a website with an audience they wanted to advertise to, or a website finding a business that might want to market to their users, and then every website having to negotiate contracts with every business that wanted to set up ads.

Basically the print magazine model.

But as businesses wanted to advertise to larger populations (we want to do a $10million ad spend, how many little phpforums are we going to have to reach out to before spending all this money?) and websites grew larger audiences (how many companies are we going to have to reach out to before we start making a profit?) the overhead was too high.

The model now is, any company can fork over whatever budget they have to an ad network, and websites can serve as many ads as they want and everyone gets the reduced overhead of just dealing with the middle man.

So that's what I think happened.

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#77

Post by toasterlovin »

cthaeh wrote: post #61
braythwayt wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it easy to explain that Apple is not using a mobile phone monopoly to X, for any X, by virtue of the fact that Apple does not have a mobile phone monopoly, not even close. If I want Google ad tracking on my phone, I have a bewilderingly large selection of Android phones to choose from, all of which run on the same mobile networks as my iPhone, work with the same Internet, and all of the apps I consider part of…

I find it very easy to use "Apple" and "monopoly" in the same sentence. Apple has been consistently making it harder to make money off iOS users without sharing that revenue with apple. Furthermore, they don't allow side loading of apps, their own apps have special api's that their competitors can't use, etc. I could go on and on.

Luckily for this discussion, the word 'monopoly' has an accepted definition, which is:

> The exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service

Since Apple has, at most, below 50% market share in developed countries (and a much lower market share in developing countries), they do not possess a monopoly on the smartphone market.

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#78

Post by toasterlovin »

RandomBK wrote: post #49
scarface74 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple, the same way that Spotify, Netflix, Amazon (Kindle), DirecTVNow, Sling, and a bunch of other companies do - force people to pay on their own websites to use the app.... Apple doesn’t have an “ad network”.

Only catch here is that Apple also takes a cut of such subscription revenue if it goes through an app [0]. Individually, I support Apple's decisions around enforcing privacy on the web. However, Apple's decisions when taken as a whole is making it incredibly difficult for a company to generate revenue from iOS users without sharing some of that revenue with Apple. Whether this makes Apple a monolopy I do not know, bu…

No, they only take a cut if the subscription is originated on the app.

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#79

Post by 8bitsrule »

downandout wrote: post #62
kibwen wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to suggest offense, but I wonder how old you are? I may not quite be a greybeard just yet, but I remember being enraptured by the content on the internet long before it was caught in the stranglehold of advertisers. Big-budget affairs would be more scarce, but there would be no dearth of content.

I am old enough to have seen the Internet emerge. You were enraptured by content and services provided by companies that lost billions of dollars, courtesy of investors, during the dot com era. Those investors provided that capital in large part because they knew how lucrative it could be if online advertising became as efficient and effective as it is today. You will not see that kind of subsidy in the post-ad world…

I'm old enough to have seen it all, from promising start to today's degeneracy.

Noone begged those companies to try to turn the Internet into a profit center, or to chew up enormous bandwidth and energy costs after being sold a foolish dream about targeting adverts.

The quality of the content was already being shared by millions of talented and thoughtful people. Because that's where the talent arises. Then your investors did for the internet what the music business did for music.

Oh, but that wasn't enough. After the ads, collecting and selling personal data to anyone came along. Regardless of millions of voices saying stop. Now the stream was not just full of trash, but flowed with multiple toxins.

A pox on all of them. I'd like to see all commercial interests limited to a very short list of TLDs. Then let's watch and see the mass migration. Let's call it 'choice'.

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#80

Post by Gustomaximus »

rale00 wrote: post #40

So what is going to happen when Apple succeeds in making it impossible to make any money off advertisements shown to iOS users on the web? I'm currently imagining a future where publishers start to just redirect iOS traffic to install their app, where they can actually make money. Good news for the walled garden, I guess?

Is there no money in roadside billboards? They are not highly targeted.

Removing tracking will take some profitability off ads but eyeballs are always going to be valuable.

Post reply on HN